30 May 2013

Art I like - "Embroidering between Print and Ink" by Denise Jones

Denise Jones's "Embroidering between Print and Ink" is absolutely my favourite piece in this year's Prism exhibition ("Liminal" is at Mall Galleries till 4pm Saturday). While looking at it, I felt a hidden door in my mind open, just a crack...

The piece - four panels, hung loosely - has simplicity and beauty, a certain randomness and a certain deliberation. Thread is used to best advantage, doing what only thread can do, giving that shimmer that depends entirely on the orientation of individual stitches and the accumulation of many, many stitches.

She says, in the wall label: "The process of embroidery is an abstract, active and thought engaging process, like a particular language, linked in some way to 'making good'. The stitches in this work are worked in the gaps between ink and print, in liminal spaces where symbolic words seem inadequate to convery emotive meanings."

The idea of embroidery as a silent language of 'making good' - mending - develops the idea of stitch as connection. Something to think about while I stitch my own samples.

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.

8 August - Docklands, either the architecture or the covered garden or the museum. Meet in the museum cafe for lunch.